


They Are Not Worth You

by ladyofrosefire



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ep 59 the Feywild, F/M, Feelings Realization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrosefire/pseuds/ladyofrosefire
Summary: I've had this rattling around in my head since Taliesin told everyone that Percy realized he was in love with Vex during their conversation in "The Feywild"





	They Are Not Worth You

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue is obviously from Critical Role, and does not belong to me. Hopefully no one will hold that against me.

“Vex.” Percy whispers, irritation tightening his voice as much as his tiredness.

“Yes?”

Her voice is muffled by the door, but there’s something slightly off about it. He’ll handle that in a moment. Percy pushes it open, and then pokes his head into her room. She’s sitting on the bed in pants and shirt, her armor spread around her and a polishing cloth in one hand. Percy rubs his eyes, sighs, and slumps against the door frame.

“Little shit put a charm on me. I felt it wear off about forty-five minutes ago.”

Vex straightens.  “Before we made the deal with him?”

“Yes.”

She throws down the cloth. “Fuck, Percy! I made the deal because you said it was fine!”

“Well, I–” He sputters.

Vex waves a hand. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.” Then she drops her face into it. “Well.”

“Well, at least we know that he definitely can’t be trusted.”

He’s not really one for optimism, usually, but he has to at least try. This is more realism, anyway. Whatever the hell happened, it’s entirely too late to back out now. Vex, on the other hand, seems to still be in the anger phase of realizing one has been thoroughly fucked by a strange little fae creature.

“It’s our own stupid fault. We knew we weren’t supposed to trust anything here.”

Percy shifts a step into the room. “I know.”

Finally, Vex laughs. Just a little breath of a thing, but it’s-- good. It makes him feel oddly lighter.

He continues. “We’ve got to make sure that Pike doesn’t give him back his whistle, just yet. And we have to figure out a way--”

“Why did you want to fix his whistle? You just liked him.”

He gives a helpless shrug. “He was so nice! He was just so nice.” Then he leans back against the door and scrubs a hand over his face.

Vex ducks her head and raises a hand to smooth her hair. It only half hides her tiny smile. “Damn it. I thought you knew something we didn’t know. I really thought you did.”

“I did. It’s sadly what I knew was he’s a little shit.”

Vex laughs again, a bubbling fall of sound that’s not quite delighted, but certainly isn’t dry.

“I just didn’t know until about half an hour ago.” Percy’s head thunks against the wall. “I hate magic! I _hate_ magic.”

He clenches one hand into a fist and hits his other palm with it a few times. Not violently, not even hard enough to make sound. Just enough to let some of the frustration drain down from his shoulders.

“Percy.” When Vex speaks this time, she sounds different. Quieter and-- and _unsure_ in a way that sounds somehow supremely un-Vex-like “Change of subject.”

“Hmm?”

“Would you say I look put together? Well off? With this armor.” She fiddles with the collar of her shirt as she speaks, her voice catching and halting over the words.

He frowns. “In what sense?”

“Well, you come from money, right?

“Yes.”

She sounds like she’s sidling up to something, as though whatever it is she wants to discuss might bolt away if she comes at it too directly. He has to wonder whether she’s worried about him running, or herself.

“Right, so, um,” Vex looks down, visibly collecting herself. Drawing some proverbial bow for whatever it is she wants to strike at. She flicks her plait back over her shoulder, as if that could hide the fact that it’s still wet from being washed and that she had not done as neat a job rebraiding it as her brother would have.

“Do I look like I come from money?

She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. They have all been wearing the same armor for ages and ages, the same clothes, the same boots. If their things weren’t magic, and if Keyleth couldn’t Mend, they’d all be running around in pieces rag pickers would laugh at. Vex’s armor is practical, not the ornately decorated bullshit his people so often wear. Absently, his fingers rub over the silk of his cravat. The decorated bullshit, he amends, that he wears, from his boots to the currently absent weight of his coat.

Vex has all the markers of a hero, and none of the ones of a noblewoman, not now. With that imperious arch she gets to her brow, yes, she looks every bit the lady and more. But now, there is an air to her like someone has come along and cracked her open. She looks, quite frankly, the most real she has since he met her. Which is a horrible thing to say. He can tell, now, that she’s been crying. Vex shouldn’t have to cry for her to look _real_.

It hits him, then, that this is Vex without all her walls up. It’s an odd kind of privilege, to see her like this. A gift he will handle with the utmost care. Vex is not fragile, he knows that, but anyone can be hurt laid open like this.

Percy lets out a sigh. "Honestly, dear, you’re too happy to look like you come from money.”

“I don’t believe that.”

It’s not true, of course. But she laughs, and that is all he wants.

The realization nearly knocks him flat.

He barrels ahead before his face can go scarlet or his words abandon him. This is far more important than any-- Than everything else going on.

“No, it’s a sure sign of it, is an abject misery, believe me. I can speak to it.”

He stops, then. That was a little too far, and a little too close to his own bleeding core. If he gives her the chance to deflect, she will, and then this hurt will remain. It will fester, and it will eat away at everything that-- that he _loves_ about her. He’s not a good man, or a kind one, but he can give her better than _that_. So he continues.

“You look too much like you, and you don’t look enough like something you’re supposed to be. Um. If you feel the urge to deeply bullshit, I’d be happy to help you. It’s not hard.”

She shifts at that, so achingly hopeful that Percy feels what’s left of his heart throb in sympathy.

“No?”

Gods help him, she’s turning him into a poet.

“No. It is easy to pretend you come from money. You just have to be a bit of a shit and wear what everybody else is wearing.”

She looks a little less-- shattered, now, and he knows what he’s about to ask is going to crack her open again, but it could be months or years before she lets him see her like this again. He’s not going to waste it.

Percy tilts his head in the direction he assumes leads to Syngorn. “Does this have something to do with that city?”

She says nothing, only smooths her hair again and takes a few unsteady breaths. It’s her armor, of course. The way his is pomposity and sarcasm.

“It does, doesn’t it.”

Again, he gives her a chance to reply. She at least does not deny it.

“Who’s there?

“Well, you know. Everyone.” She pauses for a moment, swiping at the tears that have begun to fall again. “We were judged, growing up, and I… I don’t look forward to seeing that again.”

His mother had always told him he would regret not carrying a proper handkerchief, someday. He just had not expected that day to come like this.

Percy lets out a long, drawn out sigh, and tucks his hands into his irritatingly empty pants pockets.

“Well.”

Silence fills the room while he searches for something, _anything_ he can say. He imagines she would not appreciate threats to burn the whole city to the ground, to make them beg for her forgiveness. He still wants to do it, and more.

Vex must take his silence to be his looking for an excuse to run. She holds out a hand, half waving him off, half reaching out.

“It’s not important.”

“Oh, I disagree.”

He finally steps away from the wall. The thick carpet muffles the sounds of his boots. They cannot quite take him to her. Percy finds himself caught, pacing, Vex’s red-rimmed eyes tracking him as he moves aimlessly, uselessly, back and forth in front of her, his hands still in his pockets. He can look at her, but only in fits and starts.

“Dear, I think that if you’re worried about them knowing whether or not you’ve made your money and made your fortune– I don’t think that’s going to be the thing to earn their respect.” He has to pause to breathe, just then. He’s never thought to resent his lung capacity before, but he does now. But breathing gives him time to gather both his thoughts and his nerve, which he desperately needs.

“I think you’re better off, A, with the company that you keep,” he continues “and B, with the fact that you’re probably just better than most of them.”

Vex laughs. He can’t tell if she’s laughing at the truth of their ragtag group of idiots and fuckups being the best company for her, or in incredulity, or in disbelief. It spurs him forward. Percy breaks away from his pacing and goes to her. He could join her on the bed, sit with her, but that seems presumptuous even now. Besides, she has her armor spread out over the duvet. It makes for a good enough excuse. 

“I’ve known a lot of people with money, and, ah,” Percy takes her hands in his and kneels. “they are definitely not worth you.”

It’s such a small smile he gets in response for that, but there’s something in how she looks at him. Some sort of-- peace. Some sense that his words have actually helped her, in some way. It’s all he can do to keep from pouring his foolish, selfish heart out to her there and then.

“Um.” Percy looks down at their clasped hands for the space of a breath, just for long enough to focus. “And besides, if they have something nice that makes you feel inferior, we can just take it.”

He smiles up at her, and Vex laughs, her body folding forward around the sound, toward him.

“I like the way you think.”

Her eyes are still crinkled at the corners with her smile. Percy’s heart plants itself firmly in his throat.

“Well, and then they’re just shit without anything, and then you’re you with their stuff.”

“Thank you, Percy.”

He has to look away again, just for a moment, so he doesn’t say anything stupid. “You’re welcome. I know it doesn’t really help. But...”

All he can do is sigh uselessly.

“Will you stay at my side when we’re there?”

She squeezes his hands tight. Percy returns the pressure, his thumbs rubbing over the backs of her hands.

“Yes. And… ” He plans to do a fair bit more than that. “The outfit works. Don’t change it. Keep the hat.”

It gets a last laugh out of her. “Alright.”

They look at each other for a moment before she adds “Good night.”

He knows a dismissal when he hears one, and he can’t blame her. He knows how difficult it is to let someone see the broken parts of you. Percy slips his hands from hers and gets to his feet. Vex would accept it, he thinks, if he were to kiss her on the cheek. But all he can think of is pressing his mouth to hers, and it’s not the right time. His hands return to his pockets, and he steps back.

“Good night. Sleep well.” He gives her a nod as he moves slowly to the door.

“We’ll sort out this charmed mess in the morning.”

Percy winces “I’m sorry for my part in it.”

He’s not just apologizing for the mess with Garmelie, but he doesn’t need to say that aloud. It’s not about him, anyway. Vex deserves to be happy. She deserves never to have to worry about her worth, or her standing again, in any company. She deserves love and joy and to be unconstrained-- by herself, or by any self-important shit who might have an opinion on her.

She deserves something kinder than him.

Percy leaves. He returns to his room, he makes a few notes, something that might be the beginnings of a letter to his sister. He takes off his shoes, his vest, and his cravat. Then he settles into the plush bed, head propped on one arm. Retort goes under his pillow, where he won’t roll onto it and set the damn thing off. For a long while, he stares at the ceiling.

He’ll do what he can for her, and that means keeping this… revelation, this discovery, to himself. She deserves to have a more complete man offer his love.


End file.
